Several Corpus Christi residents had a front row seat the mid-air nightmare that played on a Southwest Airlines flight yesterday morning.
At least seven people from Corpus Christi were on that flight from New York City to Dallas. Today, they are just thankful to be alive.
For some, the experience on the plane was so disturbing that they opted to drive home from the East Coast.
It was supposed to be trip filled with *fun memories for the Trevino and Fernandez families. Roland and Gina Trevino, and their daughter Denise, traveled to New York with their family friends, Carlos and Iris Fernandez.
They went to a Yankees game, and took in the Big Apple’s sights.
However on their way home, their lives were on the line, when a blown jet engine of the Southwest Airlines plane set of a frightening chain of events that left one businesswoman dead and several injured.
Today, the two families are shaken. So shaken that they opted not to fly again. Instead, the five are making the nearly 30 hour drive from Philadelphia to Corpus Christi.
The families did not want to speak on camera, saying it is too difficult to relive yesterday’s trauma. Especially when one passenger, 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan, died at a Phildadelphia hospital after the plane made an emergency landing.
In a statement, the Trevino and Fernandez families tell us:
"We would like to give our condolences to the family of Jennifer who was on the plane a couple of rows ahead of us. No words can explain the experience we went through. It was just something you never think would happen to you just in movies. There came many times were we just thought about our families and how they wouldn’t be able to ever see or talk to us again. This is definitely something that is an eye opener for us all."
Another Corpus Christi couple, Alfred Tumlinson and his wife Diana McBride self, also spent the spent the week in New York for a Texas Farm Bureau Gala. After also surviving that fateful flight, they are grateful to be safely back on Texas soil.
"You just can’t imagine. It was an experience that I never want to experience again, I can tell you that," Tumlinson said.
Tumlinson and his wife landed safely in Dallas yesterday afternoon.
The Trevino and Fernandez families continue on their drive towards home, and tell KRIS 6 News they cannot wait to see their families.
